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| Tao of Steve, The |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 87 m |
| Public Rating: 7.22 (27 votes) |
Director: Jenniphr Goodman |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Romance |
Year: 2000 |
| Writer(s): Jenniphr Goodman and Greer Garson, “based on a story by Duncan North, based on an idea by Duncan North, based on Duncan North.” |
| Reviewed by: Friday and Saturday Night Critic |
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Early on in “The Tao of Steve” the overweight, womanizing, underemployed philosopher runs into an old buddy from college. Our chubby Don Giovanni, named Dex, marvels that his old acquaintance has become a priest, but all the priest wants to do is use the toilet. So Dex sits down in the stall next to him, talking about how great it must be to work for God, and how he himself could not take up the vow of chastity. The scene has the look of a confessional, but all the Padre wants to do is use the facilities in peace. Dex just keeps talking and talking and talking. The scene sums up the entire “The Tao of Steve:” Dex, for all his learning and brilliance, is just missing a few obvious hints about getting closer to God.
Dex (as played with a Hank Quinlan-style artificial gut by Donal Logue of TV’s “Grounded for Life”) is one of the more memorable characters of recent films. He seems to have committed to memory every book on philosophy and religion from the Far East all the way to the Near West, and his personal library is impressive and impressively reeks of the Mary Jane. We meet him first at his ten-year college reunion, where everyone marvels how this class-champ has done so little with his life besides get fat. Dex works part-time at a kindergarten, not really teaching the children anything besides how to have fun, and he shares a substantial New Mexico adobe-style house with three or four other single guys, wallowing in their masculinity.
Despite these setbacks, Dex continually beds the pretty ladies. How is this possible, wonders the youngest guy in the house (Kimo Wills). Dex loves pontificating more than anything else, so Dex explains the Tao of Steve, in a hilarious poker scene in which the soundtrack shifts to match all his pop-culture allusions. Steve is not a particular man, but the idea of the quintessential American male: cool, laid-back, never trying to impress the ladies, but always scoring in the end. The man who rides alone. They cite Steve Dallas of the Six-Million Dollar Man, Steve McGarret of “Hawaii Five-O,” and the ultimate Steve, Steve McQueen, in a scene in which we realize Elmer Bernstein should probably be canonized.
The basic dogma of being a Steve is to 1) give up all your desires to win the honeys, 2) be excellent in her presence, and 3) be gone, id est, make her chase after you in the end. The last of these three rules is perhaps the most confusing but, as Dex explains, it simply means that both men and women want to have sex, but women want to have sex fifteen minutes after men do. So “hold out for twenty and she’ll be chasing you for five.” Improbable as this philosophy sounds, Dex beds a student bartender and a friend’s wife within the first act. The student, while looking over his personal library, remarks how badly her last date went, to which he replies “oh, this isn’t a date, dating’s too complicated,” and before you know it he’s waking up next to her.
Then along comes a woman named Sid, who explains to Dex that Don Giovanni slept with thousands of women because he was too terrified to be unloved by one. Naturally Dex is enamored with Sid and realizes the error of his ways. In most movies about players a woman comes along who makes him abandon his womanizing and start preferring quality over quantity, and in most romances this is when things start to feel obligatory and I look at my watch. But “The Tao of Steve” never loses its stride because Dex remains defiant and likeably obnoxious even as his tune begins to change, even as he reluctantly makes overt gestures of affection. The movie also has a complete arc for his character, in three stages: we meet him as a womanizing slacker, we hear about his past as the big man on campus with all the prospects, and we see him changed for the better by the end.
“The Tao of Steve” does not have a large cast of characters, but it knows them well. A married friend (David Aaron Baker) whom Dex has yet to cuckold is continually making cutting remarks about Don Giofatti’s lifestyle that slide under Dex’s radar. Dex accuses him and his wife of adopting romantic love as a religion, superseding even their relationship with God. He even speculates that America’s national religion is romantic love (apparently he’s overlooking Dante’s “new life” theory, or whatever it’s called, in which the pure love of an ideal woman improves your love of God). Dex’s young roommate, initially dubious of the Tao, becomes its student, and eventually Dex can’t help feeling he’s set the boy a bad example. Greer Garson, as Sid, sees through Dex’s philosophy time and time again, and is unwilling to coddle him despite their attraction. “The Tao of Steve” knows that men need sympathy and to be fawned over, and Sid fights her mothering urge for as long as possible, or at least until Dex stops boinking someone else’s wife.
The movie is set in New Mexico, a refreshing switch from New York and L.A. where most movies think love grows. Making her feature film debut, director Jenniphr Goodman (that’s right, “Jenniphr”) could have let our POV sit like a bump on a log and given us a well-written sitcom, but she wields her camera in circles around her characters, uses some clever edits, and continually features them against rich Southwestern backdrops. The oranges of the deserts, the greens of the forest, and the long shadows of the evening and photographed with care, and every outdoor scene has either a fantastic sky of perfect pillow clouds or lush, cactus-covered slopes. “The Tao of Steve” also features an almost non-stop soundtrack of cheerful guitar pop from bands with mellow-voiced singers. While there are some truly clever uses of Steve themes, and Dex struggles through a hike set to the Lemonheads’ “I Lied About Being the Outdoor Type,” some of the scenes would have benefited from a little more silence.
At its barest outlines “The Tao of Steve” follows the traditional path of romantic comedies, only it’s so much smarter. There are no stupid misunderstandings or irrelevant subplots involving stolen jewels or money for an orphanage. Most of the women are good-looking by real-world standards, but not movie sex goddesses, and they have wrinkles, bad haircuts, and imperfect makeup just like in real-life. The guys are mostly slobs and there are even a few grey hairs. It’s a little movie, content to be what it is, and there’s only a little dirty talk and no nudity. “The Tao of Steve” never turns soppy or sentimental, and while it has a serious side, it never becomes heavy-handed. And what is the serious side, the revelation that completes Dex’s circle and finally causes him to tuck his shirt in? It isn’t that the Tao is the wrong way to live life, but he’s just missed the obvious hint of how to use it.
Finished October 12th, 2002
Copyright © 2002 Friday & Saturday Night
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 Printable Version
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Starring Donal Logue, Greer Garson, Kimo Wills, Ayelet Kaznelson, David Aaron Baker, and Nina Jaroslaw
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